Amount of time for link acquisition to take effect

[jaffstar]

I read and interesting article [seomoz.org ] which discussed buying links and how long it took to impact results.

We have always believed that Google counts links +- every 3 months and therefore if a link is acquired, it will take up to 3 months to see results.

The experiments concluded suggest it took 3-4 days to see massive improvements. This does go against the statement above.

What are your thoughts ?

[BenFox]

Once the page has been indexed you can feel the benefit pretty much instantly. If you're stuggling to get a page crwled then try posting a link from your Twitter account to the page - I read somewhere (possibly SEOMoz - sorry can't remember) that Google crawls Twitter links within around 2 minutes.

[jaffstar]

When I say "results" I am talking about ranking change , not indexation.

[Mark_A]

Well we had a lot of new links to one site as a result of a PR campaign and our experience was more on the 3 months end of things.

There are however sites, busy forums for example that are constantly crawled and they perhaps might be much much quicker!

[martinibuster]

all links were pulled as soon as changes were observed

That's a good video by SEOMoz describing the burst effect. It's a well known phenomenom where Google allows a site to temporarily pop into the top ten based on newly acquired links (paid or unpaid).

Google's basis for doing that is that a site acquiring new links may be temporarily noteworthy, as when linking to a site goes viral, or a site is the center of a news event.

The burst effect may depend on the quality of the link. On average I see some movement within a maximum of two weeks. However that's just the burst effect and is temporary. SEOMoz pulled the links within days so there is no way to know how permanent (and useful) the effect of the links were.

Between two weeks of acquiring a link (PAID or UNPAID) and three months there will typically be a bit of bouncing around. After the three month point, often longer as all the links get settled in, you will then see your actual ranking position.

[edited by: martinibuster at 8:17 am (utc) on Dec 10, 2010]

[CainIV]

Depends on the nature of the link, reason for the link and query type.

News links I find count very quickly, and often have long term value.

[BenFox]

In addition to my previous repsonse - when I say benefit I mean rankings change not indexation.

I work in an industry that isn't particular competitive so one decent link makes a noticable difference to a page's rankings. We've seen near instant increases in rankings once Gbot has recognised a link - it's waiting for it to crawl the page that seems to take the most time.

[Freedom]

I've been wanting to post the same question here, but martinibuster thankfully answered it, and did confirm what I experience as well. Well, I experience about 3 different ranking improvement phenomenon when building links to targeted pages. Here's what happens:

1. When the targeted page bursts out on to the 1st page of SERPS, it hangs there for a few days, then falls back to the 2nd page. It then stays on the 2nd page for a few more days or, it stays there for a few weeks before going back to the first page.

2. The targeted page gets pushed up to the 2nd page of serps, often in the top 15. And, often, Google will laugh at me by pushing it right to the edge at #11 where it hangs out for a week or two before finally moving to #9 or #8 or #7.

3. Google will sometimes recognize a link right away, and movement will occur, or it will cache the link and nothing happens right away and no movement takes place for 1week or more. Often, more than 1 week.

Can anyone else confirm these 3 types of link recognition movements by Google?

It seems that in my field, I can get any targeted page I want pushed to the 2nd page of the SERPS for 3 word combinations, but when it comes to the getting them to move to the first page, it's rather indefinite and I have much less ability to influence.